Science Fact: Consider taste bias: wine snobs are a favorite target of psychology researchers. After all, how sweet is it to show that someone who emotes about “terroir” and “cherry notes” can’t distinguish Margaux from Two Buck Chuck in a … Continue reading
Category Archives: News
I’ve been adding a post 2 or 3 times a week, and the title and a link are supposed to appear on my Facebook and LinkedIn pages. Guess what? Those links periodically expire, so I have to (a) notice that they’re dead … Continue reading
Science Fact: A mechanical person – a robot companion – wants to become a member of your family. Clearly, there’s a conspiracy afoot! The World Organization for Robotic Tyranny (WORT) wants to get us comfortable with a robot companion, so … Continue reading
Science Fact: Science Magazine conducted a journal sting operation and exposed many international publications as money-grabbing operations with no scientific credentials at all. Publications are critical to researchers in many ways: they determine job security and promotion at many universities. … Continue reading
Science Fact: Let’s teach our kids early – maybe when they’re one year old – or even prenatal learning! There’s a new study that really makes us jump up. Let’s talk about what’s new, and how it fits into what … Continue reading
Science Fact: Tesla fire: on Tuesday last week near Seattle, a Tesla Model S electric vehicle driving on a state highway ran over some metal debris and damaged its lithium-ion battery pack. The driver stopped and evacuated safely before the … Continue reading
Science Fact: Two recent news stories speak directly to the dilemma of Privacy versus Security. Movies, Internet, literature, technology, even cartoons bring “privacy versus security” on center stage. Let’s organize it and try to make some sense, at the price … Continue reading
Science Fact: Replacement organs for the human body seem tantalizingly close, based on recent work. Today, artificial limbs, joints and arterial stents seem commonplace. Bionic organs, mechanical marvels that work within and with your body, are coming along rapidly: today, … Continue reading
Science Fact: We seem to be getting dumber, year by year. A recent European study compared 120 years of intelligence tests and found that the Western countries have lost 14 points of IQ since the Victorian era. The researchers suggest … Continue reading
Science Fact: Let’s hear it for renewable energy! What, an extra jolt of coffee in the morning to supercharge your day? No, more like — what do we do when the OIL runs out? You know: solar, wind, biogas (think … Continue reading
Science Fact: No-hangover beer. Now there’s a provocative research result! I can imagine the questions that might be posed: – Did my tax dollars pay for that? – Is that the most important thing scientists have to work on? – … Continue reading
Science Fact: Go on a raisin diet and lose weight? Prevent diabetes? Wait a minute, didn’t we already have the grapefruit diet, the avocado diet, etc? And who could forget the Atkins Diet with its rashers of bacon? Does everything qualify … Continue reading
Science Fact: Sanjay Gupta and marijuana? The good Doctor associating with potheads? That’s habitual marijuana smokers, in case you’ve spent the last fifty years on the moon. Often news anchors try to avoid making news, but in the case of … Continue reading
Science Fact: A news item about nanoscale “cantilevers” may hold the answer to a serious problem facing hospitals. If you arrive at a hospital with a serious bacterial infection, you may have only a few hours to live unless the … Continue reading
Science Fact: The science reports I read have been recently full of breathless reports from astronomers diligently discovering exoplanets, that is, extrasolar planets. Those are planets outside our Solar System that might be like Earth, or at least similar enough … Continue reading
Science Fact: Fourteen researchers from Germany and Canada created a brain map from a deceased woman and are making the results available online to researchers. What’s new is the extremely fine resolution of the images: fifty times better than previous … Continue reading